Attorney Street

Written & Performed by Edgar Oliver

Directed by Randy Sharp

October 26 - November 19, 2016

Wednesdays - Saturdays at 8PMAdults$35; Seniors/Students$25; Artists/Under 30 $15; Veterans & Active U.S. Service Members and Their Families, FREE

Edgar Oliver, the singular storyteller and beloved downtown NYC theatre artist, returns to Axis Theatre to perform the world premiere of Attorney Street, the final installment in a trilogy of solo shows, directed by Randy Sharp, charting Oliver's life in New York City. Following 2014's acclaimed In the Park and, before it, 2009's breakthrough East 10th Street: Self Portrait with Empty House (Edinburgh Fringe First Award; NYT Critic's Pick), Attorney Street follows Oliver as he is forced to leave his longtime home in one of the last East Village SROs, on East 10th Street, and finds his way to his current residence, on Attorney Street on the Lower East Side. Between the two was a circuitous path that held turns and encounters that changed Oliver's life, and opened doors he never thought existed.

“... extraordinary ... in 'Attorney Street,' (Edgar Oliver's) seriously haunting new performance piece ... the phantoms summoned by this one-of-a-kind monologuist are both vivid and elusive, as such manifestations must be ... Mr. Oliver's tone often seems poised between that of Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe, with perhaps a touch of Tennyson's memorializing rapture. Mr. Oliver is, above all, an elegist, as so many 19th-century writers were.”

“The autobiography of Edgar Oliver hauntingly describes and defines what it means to be human. For those who've experienced real loss, unanswered love, abandonment, loneliness, guilt, disappointment, or regret, this performance will reach deeply into their souls. For those who've been fortunate enough to live lives of ease, comfort, and acceptance, Attorney Street will open their hearts and mind to the human condition, and reveal what it means to truly be alive.”

“The piece is a brief anthology of farewells, to a bakery in an earlier New York, to a lost poem, to a father he never knew. There's a feeling of suspended time: Oliver sometimes seems like a time-traveler buffeted by our too-noisy world ... lyrical ... heartbreaking...”

“(Edgar Oliver) is funny and warm, wide-eyed and thoughtful, charming and vulnerable ... (his) storytelling and performance are intimate and personal ... Attorney Street is a genuinely special night of small pleasures in the downtown theater.”